"Incorporates authors' name, biographies, and titles of their works in one alphabetical listing. Plot summaries also included. Covers U.S. and Canadian literature."--

More than ten years in the making, this comprehensive single-volume literary survey is for the student, scholar, and general reader. The Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature represents a collaborative effort, involving 300 contributors from across the US and Canada. Composed of more than 1,100 signed biographical-critical entries, this Encyclopedia serves as both guide and companion to the study and appreciation of American literature. A special feature is the topical article, of which there are 70.

Portions of this book appeared in a somewhat modified form in The Reader's encyclopedia of American literature (T.Y. Crowell, 1962) and in Benet's reader's encyclopedia, 3d ed. (Harper and Row, 1987). Some 1,500 entries are new; those that are not new have been revised and updated. The scope is American literature from the period of European exploration to the 1990s, with emphasis on the US but including extensive coverage of Canada and Latin America. Entries include writers and writings, literary groups and movements, newspapers and other periodicals, and literary terms; also within the alphabetical arrangement are broad historical and topical essays. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A classic reference work originally published forty years ago, The Reader's Encyclopedia of American Literature is an irresistable guide to nearly everything there is to know about American literature. The thousands of entries, contributed by more than 130 scholars, include biographies of novelists, playwrights, poets and critics, summaries of books and plays, descriptions of characters, definitions of literary terms and movements, and much more. Featuring hundreds of longer essays on broad topics of interest such as Native American Prose and Poetry, Jewish American Literature, Humor in the United States, and Motion Pictures, the REAL is an authoritative and engrossing-- and often quirky -- guide to American life and the canon in all its variety and vigor. This new edition, the first since 1991, has added 300 new writers who have come to prominence in the last decade, from Amy Tan and E. Annie Proulx to Oscar Hijuelos, Paul Auster, David Guterson, and many more. Over 1300 existing entries have been revised and updated in light of recent scholarship.

This set treats the whole of American literature, from the European discovery of America to the present, with entries in alphabetical order. Each of the 350 substantive essays is a major interpretive contribution. Well-known critics and scholars provide clear and vividly written essays thatreflect the latest scholarship on a given topic, as well as original thinking on the part of the critic. The Encyclopedia is available in print and as an e-reference text from Oxford's Digital Reference Shelf.At the core of the encyclopedia lie 250 essays on poets, playwrights, essayists, and novelists. The most prominent figures (such as Whitman, Melville, Faulkner, Frost, Morrison, and so forth) are treated at considerable length (10,000 words) by top-flight critics. Less well known figures arediscussed in essays ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words. Each essay examines the life of the author in the context of his or her times, looking in detail at key works and describing the arc of the writer's career. These essays include an assessment of the writer's current reputation with abibliography of major works by the writer as well as a list of major critical and biographical works about the writer under discussion.A second key element of the project is the critical assessments of major American masterworks, such as Moby-Dick, Song of Myself, Walden, The Great Gatsby, The Waste Land, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Death of a Salesmanr, or Beloved. Each of these essays offers a close reading of the given work,placing that work in its historical context and offering a range of possibilities with regard to critical approach. These fifty essays (ranging from 2,000 to 5,000 words) are simply and clearly enough written that an intelligent high school student should easily understand them, but sophisticatedenough that a college student or general reader in a public library will find the essays both informative and stimulating.The final major element of this encyclopedia consists of fifty-odd essays on literary movements, periods, or themes, pulling together a broad range of information and making interesting connections. These essays treat many of the same authors already discussed, but in a different context; they alsogather into the fold authors who do not have an entire essay on their work (so that Zane Grey, for example, is discussed in an essay on Western literature but does not have an essay to himself). In this way, the project is truly "encyclopedic," in the conventional sense. These essays aim forcomprehensiveness without losing anything of the narrative force that makes them good reading in their own right.In a very real fashion, the literature of the American people reflects their deepest desires, aspirations, fears, and fantasies. The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature gathers a wide range of information that illumines the field itself and clarifies many of its particulars.